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Team Spirit: IWC Pilot’s Watch Double Chronograph Edition DFB

Even before the starting whistle for the Euro 2008 in Switzerland and Austria, IWC Schaffhausen is producing a football highlight. The Swiss manufactory will supply the official watch of the German national football team. Fans will also be able to underscore their support for the team with the Pilot’s Watch Double Chronograph Edition DFB, of which precisely 500 examples will be built.

Football players love polished technique – both on the ball and off the field. Players in the German national team previously demonstrated this in the 2006 World Cup season. During the training camp in Switzerland, IWC Schaffhausen visited the team, including its coaches Jürgen Klinsmann and Joachim Löw as well as team manager Oliver Bierhoff, in Geneva. A watchmaking training session, supervised by IWC specialists, met with an equally enthusiastic response from the sportsmen as did the refined timepieces which IWC presented in the course of the visit. Certainly not the least significant outcome of this visit is the partnership that has now emerged between the German Football Association (DFB) and IWC Schaffhausen.

In future, IWC will manufacture the “Official Watches of the German National Football Team”. IWC will issue an exclusive model in a limited edition for each of the forthcoming major competitions, the Euro 2008 in Switzerland and Austria, and the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. The German footballers are starting the European Cup with the Pilot’s Watch Double Chronograph Edition DFB, a masculine timepiece with characteristics that could serve as the model for the team’s approach to the game. The double chronograph impressively combines dynamics, creativity, precision, robustness and reliability.

With this watch, these top German players will always be on the button in the truest sense of the word. The two chronograph buttons permit the recording of aggregate times up to twelve hours, and the third button controls the splitseconds mechanism developed by IWC: It stops the split-seconds hand in order to measure an intermediate time within any one-minute period, and then it allows that hand to fly back and become synchronized with the running stop time. IWC has modified the minute graduations especially for the DFB watch. An area marked out as a square indicates the passage of 45 minutes, the duration of one half of the game, and red numerals show any extra time. This totalizer is thus integrated harmoniously into the overall appearance of the dial, which is finished in the DFB team colours. The dial’s background colour is white, corresponding to the home strip, while the numerals and the totalizer are black, like the players’ socks. The two red seconds hands and the yellow split-seconds hand complement the colour scheme. A black soft strap with anthracite- grey decorative stitching, which contributes to the watch’s overall elegance, ensures a comfortable fit on the wrist. An engraving on the steel case back identifies the chronograph as the “Official Watch of the German National Football Team”. This inscription borders the relief DFB logo at the centre of the back. The serial number of the watch, which is limited to 500 copies, can also be found here.

All the players on the European Cup squad will receive a watch bearing their individual number on the back of their strip, and the first 50 watches are reserved exclusively for the DFB. The other watches in this limited edition are intended for ambitious football fans who wish to demonstrate their support for the German national team on their wrist. By purchasing the Pilot’s Watch Double Chronograph Edition DFB, they are also making a contribution to a good cause. That’s because IWC and the DFB are supporting the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation Germany through their partnership by, among other things, donating part of the proceeds from sales to the Foundation. True to style, the Pilot’s Watch Double Chronograph Edition DFB was introduced at the training camp of the German national football team on Mallorca. Henrik Ekdahl, General Manager of IWC Northern Europe, was not alone in guaranteeing an uplifting feeling as he handed over the watches; he also took the footballers on a flight through the skies above Mallorca in the Ju-52, a legendary German passenger aircraft.